Positive Liberty

Caleb has posted a long and thoughtful reply to my piece “An Atheist Confronts Disaster.” (“Come on, Caleb… This was easily a blog entry of its own. Link it from your main page, and we can raise both our Technorati ratings!”)

In any event, I’ve taken the liberty of responding in quasi-dialogic form in part because Caleb and I know one another in real life: If necessary, I can apologize to him in person. Caleb writes,

There are plenty of theists, I imagine, who don’t believe something like “the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.” That belief fits only in a particular theistic tradition. So if it is a beastly idea, then it casts doubt on that theistic tradition or that particular turn in the tradition, not on theism.

The quote comes from Job 1:21-22, and Caleb is right to point out that not all theisms necessarily accept this idea. It strikes me as somewhat of a quibble, though, since in practice the idea can be found in most all monotheistic religions. Not only is it pervasive in Judaism and Christianity, but in the Koran, 6:46, we find, “Have you considered that if Allah takes away your hearing and your sight and sets a seal on your hearts, who is the god besides Allah that can bring it to you?”

The habit of placing all one’s hope in the supernatural–indeed, the positive injunction to do so–This is precisely what I find troubling. Never mind that many believers do not share this tendency: Their religion commands it anyway, and they still believe the religion. (Chillingly, the Koran’s very next verse reads, “Say: Have you considered if the chastisement of Allah should overtake you suddenly or openly, will any be destroyed but the unjust people?”)

On the other hand, I find Caleb entirely correct when he writes, “It’s important not to overdefine what it means to be an ‘atheist.’ To say that ‘atheists fight disaster with…’ is to infer a lot from atheism.”

I fully concede the point. A different atheist might very well say, “Life is unfair. Big deal. It’s not my fault, and it’s not my problem.” See for instance the Ayn Rand Institute, whose atrocious reply to the disaster has been very much along these lines. If nothing else, they could at least have argued that it is in our rational self-interest to lessen the misery of others so that they will be well-disposed to us in the future.

Responding to the disaster is only part of the story, though. Much better would have been to avert it entirely, or at least to prevent what damage we could. Here Caleb confesses himself a skeptic.

“Early warning systems?” Caleb effectively asks. “Come on. Surely your faith in humanity is not so strong that you think these enormous tragedies can be averted through reasoned action alone.”

I admit that I do sound like a dreamer. But in an earlier age, it would have been preposterous to suggest that human reason could conquer smallpox or syphilis or leprosy. It would have been preposterous to suggest that we had at our disposal–all around us and undiscovered–the means to sustain six billion humans. Admittedly, many of these people do not get the nutrition they should, but we are surely doing a better job than we used to, when there were far fewer people on earth, and when most all of them starved alike.

Likewise, I have faith that earthquakes will one day be made less dangerous, and that at some future time we may eliminate them entirely. To support my claims, I now present three examples. The first is highly practical; the second is doubtful; the third, purely fantastic–at least for the time being.

In the first case, a 10-year-old girl vacationing in Thailand saved one hundred people by applying the lessons she learned in school:

“I was on the beach and the water started to go funny,” Tilly Smith told the Sun at the weekend from Phuket, Thailand.

“There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy.”

While other holidaymakers stood and stared as the disappearing waters left boats and fish stranded on the sands, Tilly recognised the danger signs because she had done a school project on giant waves caused by underwater earthquakes.

Quick action by Tilly’s mother and Thai hotel staff meant Maikhao beach was quickly cleared, just minutes before a huge wave crashed ashore. The beach was one of the few on the Thai island of Phuket where no-one was killed.

Not to belabor the point, but suppose that Tilly had spent her time reciting prayers instead of learning about Tsunamis. And by contrast, consider how the disaster might have turned out differently if everyone in this geologically active region had had her knowledge.

Second, another early warning system may come from animals, many of whom seem to have escaped the tsunami. I have heard similar stories in the past and been quite skeptical about them, but then, the first generation inoculated for smallpox was also thoroughly skeptical. The remedy worked anyway, and just like them, I would be happy to be proven wrong.

Finally, there are many practical difficulties that still stand in the way of preventing earthquakes. Yet effective earthquake prevention offers far greater rewards than mere early warning, and for this alone it’s worth keeping in mind.

If disaster prevention came from God, we would call it a miracle. Why then are humans small and pathetic, when we have accomplished similar feats in the past–and when we may accomplish even more in the future? Aren’t we miracle workers too?

Intriguingly, Caleb suggests that I beg the question of God’s existence. He writes,

Perhaps the answer you would give is that, absurd or not, humanism is the only meaningful position for a human being to take in a world without God. Fair enough, but that begs the question of whether this is a world without God; it doesn’t answer that question.

I don’t see this as begging the question so much as putting it in brackets, setting it aside for consideration at a more favorable time. Given that God exists (or not), but that in any case, supernatural miracles are virtually unknown these days, which course offers a greater reward–praying for a miracle or employing the practical means at our disposal?

It is of course a false alternative: Most religious people overwhelmingly embrace technology, and while they may hope for miracles, they do not depend on them: They depend on methods that work even if you doubt them.

Having been an atheist for some ten years, it is hard for me to understand the desire to hold onto a religion when faith seems to accomplish nothing in particular, and when it may indeed provide impetus toward destructive tendencies. Am I begging the question of God’s existence? Perhaps. But at times like these, I’m hardly the only one.

Caleb is at his most incisive when he writes,

I find it meaningless to invoke the “meaning we create for ourselves” in order to understand a disaster which proves so spectacularly how finite human beings are, how ultimately puny our creative power is. It seems no more satisfying to me to say to the survivors of such a disaster, “We embrace nature … and seek to change it,” than to say that God wanted this to happen. Surely you don’t think this answer would give a survivor any more solace, but if not, then why does it give you solace?

It may sound flippant, but I still take solace in the meaning we create for ourselves. By contrast, I find it meaningless to dwell, now or ever, on how puny our creative powers are. It gives me far more comfort to hope that one day we will overcome such challenges, and that, at any rate, our efforts will not be wasted in making the attempt.

What is the end of all this effort? Theists may hope for Heaven, a place that I cannot conceive. The end that I hope for is hard to see, but I feel confident that at least trying for it will yield good results, even if we fall far short of perfection.

I confess that the question of ultimate ends is where my philosophy is by far the weakest and the most fantastic. Indeed, for a nonbeliever like me, science fiction offers some of the best expressions of our telos. Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years, in which humanity attains physical immortality and explores the infinite stars, is one example of where this constant improvement might take us, although it’s by no means the only possible end to the story.

Because we make the rules ourselves, we can only guess at what the future might hold: a terraformed Mars, perhaps? or Titan as a planetary refuge from the eventual growth of the Sun? or faster-than-light travel? Humans have been making the impossible into the possible for so long that it is virtually our defining characteristic. Yes, we have limits, but in the grandest possible sense, these limits are insignificant. Or at any rate, and for want of a better word, that is my faith.